“The source of our happiness” as “the fountain of our misery”

The expression “The source of our happiness” as “the fountain of our misery” condenses Werther’s August 18 reflection on how the same intense responsiveness that once exalted him can turn into suffering. Nature has not changed in his account; his experience of it has, so that a former source of joy now pursues and harasses him.

Form and Reversal

Werther frames the thought as a question: “Must it ever be thus,—that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery?” Its parallel halves make the reversal unmistakable: “source” becomes “fountain,” while happiness gives way to misery. The image suggests not two unrelated forces but a painful conversion within one and the same emotional source.

Nature as the Earlier Source of Joy

The entry recalls a landscape viewed from rocks across a river: forested hills, winding valleys, reeds beside the water, and clouds reflected on its surface. Birds sing in the groves; insects move through the sun’s last golden beams; even moss and heath draw attention to life persisting on barren ground. This abundance once seemed to disclose an inner warmth animating nature and filled Werther’s heart with delight.

That perception expands from particular details into a spiritual vision. Mountains, abysses, cataracts, rivers, and hidden powers in the earth suggest an infinite universe alive with forms. Werther feels himself elevated to a perception of the Godhead, and the spirit of the eternal Creator appears to him present even in the smallest atom. The movement from landscape to divine presence shows how completely his happiness once depended on feeling nature as a unified, living whole.

Significance of the Metaphor

The remembered scene sharpens the present reversal: the very ardor that had opened a vision of paradise is now an “insupportable torment.” A bird’s flight, once an inspiration to imagine traveling toward immeasurable waters and the pleasures of the Infinite, belongs to the same expansive sensibility. The expression therefore captures more than a change from pleasure to pain; it identifies continuity between them. What once enlarged Werther’s world has become the force that oppresses him, making emotional intensity both the condition of exaltation and the means of its undoing.